h a l f b a k e r y"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
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Today I was eating a packet of Ready Salted crisps, watching the television and pretty much minding my own business, when I dug my hand into the pack and exhumed the biggest crisp I had ever seen in my life. It was so big that it almost covered the entire surface of the palm of my hand, and I have pretty
big palms. Thinking that this must surely be the biggest crisp in the world, I ran about the house, excitedly announcing my discovery to the entire family. Upon seeing it, they too believed that this must be the biggest crisp in the world.
I pulled out The Guniess Book of Records 2004 from my bookshelf, and flicked through the many pages, searching for any record pertaining to hefty crisps. And then there it was - a picture of some chefs carrying a potato crisp so large that, had fewer chefs attempted to lift the thing, they'd have fallen to the ground. It turned out that some crisp company or other had decided to make an extremely large crisp, for the sole purpose of getting into the record books.
It turns out that the Guiness Book of Records is chock-full of such records, such as the world's longest baguette that is 200 foot long, baked by some French home-economic students at a fund raising event. I wouldn't be surprised to see people trying to grow extra toes on their feet just to break the current record and get into the books (the current record being six toes on each foot, held by Tribhuwan and Triloki Yadav of India).
I propose a book be made in which only reasonable records can be recorded, so that if you think you have found the biggest crisp to ever be found in a crisp packet, you can just get in touch with the people at The Book of Unsullied Records to verify whether or not you have discovered the biggest crisp in the world (that wasn't made purposefully to break a record), putting the record books back into the hands of the common man.
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Annotation:
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Difficult to police, but I admire the
idealism. |
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On the specific topic potato crisps (chips to the Americans), clearly they can be no larger than the largest potato (after allowing for some slight size change during frying - not sure whether they would grow or shrink). So I feel that Guinness should have disallowed that world record, on the grounds that the crisp was not made from a single slice of potato. |
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Which would have given your crisp a look-in. |
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(I know Pringles are all the same size, but clearly they are not real crisps/chips either, being made from reconstituted potato in much the same way cat food is made from reconstituted pig snouts.) |
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(Or duck snouts, or haddock snouts, as appropriate.) |
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It might be better as a contributor-driven Big Website of Unsullied Records. Folks could post evidence of such record setting items and events using a framework designed to reduce falsification. Photos, measurments, verfiable witnesses, etc., could all play a role in the framework for establishing the record as bona fide. From the point of the posting onward, others could post challenges to that record. |
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An oversight group, or jury, could decide whether or not the record was appropriate for the record. They'd probably reject things like the biggest turd and the like. Their decisions would be final just as are the decisions of the editorial staff of Guiness. |
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As an aside, I don't feel any particular driving societal need for the record books to be in the hands of the common man but it might make for an interesting web destination. Besides, whether book or website, the records would yet be in the hands of a publisher and not the common man. |
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Cute. Now we just need a (web) host... |
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Bristolz, I think it would really work as a website. It certainly makes it a lot easier than releasing a new book every year. |
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DrCurry, If there was ever a television show, I'd have Ian Wright as host. Unless you meant web host, and if you did, I'd still get Ian Wright involved somehow. |
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If this ever were to become a site, I'd have to crack out all those coding books. I'd also have to have regular access to the internet, which I don't have, so I give permission for someone to steal this idea. |
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I think we could include feats like the longest crawl without food or water, for that guy in "Touching The Void." |
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"The [spiritualized] Book of Unmanufactured Records" |
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I love this idea, mostly because I was thinking of something like this tonight on my way back from work. |
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Today we made a tv capsule/segment (you know what I'm talking about) in a taco restaurant where they hold an annual taco eating contest. Whoever breaks last year's record gets a price and, obviously, that night's meal is on the house. (I felt so sorry for those who didn't break the record and had to pay for their 30 something tacos... but that's not the point). |
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Anyways, this guy ate 54 tacos (chased by 8 sodas) in 2 hours, and some lady ate 42 within an hour. I was thinking, I'm sure somewhere in the world there's a sumo wrestler could eat twice as many tacos as the lady or the guy who won our local contest tonight, but his victory wouldn't be half as exciting as it was for our mexican champions. |
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